Burning sulphur flows down the side of the Kawah Ijen volcano in Java, Indonesia, both day and night, but the electric-blue flames - ignited by the sulphur's contact with air - can only be seen at night, creating the appearance of flowing blue lava.As the burning gases cool, they deposit sulphur around Kawah Ijen Crater Lake - the world's largest such body of water filled with hydrochloric acid, which has turned the water green. To hasten the formation of the mineral, a mining company installed ceramic pipes on an active vent near the edge of the crater lake, which route the sulphur gases down the vent's sloping mound. When the gases cool, they condense into liquid sulphur, which then flows or drips from the pipes and solidifies into hard mats. After the solid sulphur cools, the miners break it up and carry it off the volcano on their backs.

STRONG M-FLARE:Big sunspot AR1967 unleashed a strong M6-class solar flare on Jan. 30th at approximately 1617 UTC. The explosion, which may be seen at the end of this movie of today's solar eclipse, hurled a CME into space. Radio emissions from shock waves preceding the CME suggest that it could be leaving the sun faster than 2100 km/s (4.7 million mph). Stay tuned for updates about this potentially significant event. LUNAR TRANSIT OF THE SUN:Earlier today, the Moon eclipsed the sun. No one on Earth saw it. The "lunar transit" was only visible from space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the whole thing from geosynchronous orbit:

At maximum eclipse as much as 90% of the sun was covered. SDO is solar powered, but it did not "brown out" because mission controllers put an extra charge on the spacecraft's batteries ahead of time. Every year, SDO observes multiple lunar transits. This one, lasting almost 2.5 hours, was the longest in the history of the spacecraft's 4 year mission. www.spaceweather.com

More people are starting to look at what we've done to this planet, especially since the birth of the technological revolution. Our oceans have been suffering for a very long time, with countless oil spills and toxic waste dumped into them every single day from industrial practices and more. Despite having numerous ways to operate in a fashion that is more harmonious with the planet, we continue to choose to destroy our planet on a daily basis, and we can't afford to do that anymore. Despite how much our planet is suffering, people everyday are starting wake up and realize that we really do need to look at, question, and change the way we operate here on planet Earth. This shift in perception alone can help springboard us towards change, and creating a new experience for us and other beings who we share the planet with.Whales have been showing up dead on multiple beaches, bringing us a message with stomachs full of plastic. This has happened multiple times. In the summer of july 2013, a sperm whale was stranded on Tershelling, a Northern island in the Netherlands. The whale swallowed 56 different plastic items that totalled over 37 pounds. In april 2010, a gray whale died after stranding itself on a West Seattle beach, it was found to have over 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, plastic pieces, duct tape, and more in its system. In March of 2013 a dead sperm whale washed up on Spain's South coast which swallowed 17kg of plastic waste.The list goes on and on. Keep in mind, these are whales who choose to beach themselves or have washed up on shore, think about all the whales and other marine beings that don't. These are not uncommon events, in 1989 a stranded sperm whale in the Lavezzi Islands died of a stomach obstruction after accidentally ingesting plastic bags and 100 feet of plastic sheeting. A paper published in 1990 reports that a sperm whale in Iceland died due to a complete obstruction of the gut with plastic marine debris. In August 2008, a sperm whale washed up dead on the beach near Point Reyes, California, with 450 Pounds of fishing net, plastic bags and rope found in its stomach (see picture above) In 2008, the California Marine Mammal Stranding Database recorded another sperm whale with enormous amounts of plastic and fish netting in its stomach. I'll stop there as there are countless examples.

By now, you've probably heard of "The Great Garbage Patch," it's an area the size of Queensland, Australia where there is approximately one million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the ocean. Drag a net in any area of this part of the ocean and you will pick up toxic, discarded plastic.We've shown this video before, but here it is again just in case you missed it.

With the Fukushima disaster and the famous gulf oil spill in 2004, as well as many more we don't even hear about, I'm surprised anything at all is alive in our oceans. These events, and many more should stop everyone from their daily routines, just stop, and say no more. The world should not continue forward, people should not go to work, it's time for all of us to stop, come together and change this world. Now is our window of opportunity. These events should really serve as triggers for us to wake up and change our ways.

A mass collective desire to change these things is what has, and will put the human race on a journey to do so. It's time to educate ourselves about what is really happening on the planet, and bring awareness to the most important issues we must tackle today. This is why alternative media outlets are so important, they bring awareness and shed light on what corporate media hardly covers.

Our planet is calling on us to change our ways, and the change starts with you. At the same time, our planet is calling for a massive transformation. All of the corporations and toxic industrial practices must stop what they are doing. New, clean , green technology is available and we could easily replace all of these plastics with hemp, and much much more. We have so many solutions, yet we do not implement them.

I want to provide solutions to this problem, and it's hard to come up with them other than making changes in your own lives. There are wonderful individuals likethis one, a 19 year old boy who developed a cleanup array that could remove over seven million tons of plastic from our oceans.

China's moon rover, the Jade Rabbit, which made an historic landing in Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows) on Dec. 14th, is in trouble. Night is falling over the rover's landing site, and the rover should be going into hibernation to preserve power. China's space agency is reporting, however, that a "mechanical anomaly" may be interfering with the hibernation process. If so, the Jade Rabbit might not survive the extreme cold (-180 C) it is about to experience during two weeks of lunar night. Even if the rover fails, the mission is a success for China, which has joined the exclusive club of nations that have landed on the Moon.www.spaceweather.com

Crackling with solar flares, a large sunspot is emerging over the sun's southeactive limb. It appears to be AR1944, returning after a two-week trip around the farside of the sun. Earlier today, astronomer Karzaman Ahmad photographed the active region from the Langkawi National Observatory in Malasia:

According to tradition, sunspots that circle around the farside of the sun are re-numbered when they return. The new designation of AR1944 is AR1967. "Sunspot AR1967 is as big as Earth!" notes Ahmad. Earlier this month, AR1944/AR1967 produced an X1-class solar flare and one of the strongest radiation storms of the current solar cycle. Is round 2 about to begin? Solar activity is definitely increasing as AR1967 comes around he bend. Earth orbiting satellites have detected at least five M-class solar flares since yesterday, including this one recorded on Jan. 28th (07:30 UT) by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

No, it's not an alien planet. It's just Rio. On Jan. 23rd, Helio C. Vital looked out over the ocean from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and saw something out of this world--a rectangular sun:

As alien as it appeared, this was a phenomenon of Earth. "An inversion air layer next to the sea surface caused the top of the setting sun to acquire unusual shapes. In a matter of tens of seconds, it went from a saucer to a cup, then to a rectangle," says Vital. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains further: "A mirage morphed the sun into a rectangular block brighter at its top edge. It is even more complex than it seems. Sun rays are deflected (refracted) through the different temperature layers of a temperature inversion, cold air trapped beneath warmer air, to form not one sun image but three or even more. The topmost bright strip is the sun grazing the top of the inversion layer. Beneath it are two or more sun images, half of them rising and the others descending. They overlap to form the rectangle. Other shots show the separate sun images." "Look for these mock-mirages and their green flashes when the horizon shows a dark band of a temperature inversion," he advises. "But take care and never ever use binoculars or a telescope. Magnified sunlight can cause serious eye damage."www.spaceweather.com

Quote of the Day Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.- Frantz Fanon

January 17, 2014 – UNIVERSE – Scientists are saying that the Sun is in a phase of “solar lull” – meaning that it has fallen asleep – and it is baffling them. History suggests that periods of unusual “solar lull” coincide with bitterly cold winters. Rebecca Morelle reports for BBC Newsnight on the effect this inactivity could have on our current climate, and what the implications might be for global warming. –BBC

January 18, 2014 – SPACE – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) is teaming up with a company that manufactures fishing equipment to create a net that will sweep the heavens of the man-made debris orbiting our planet. The first test of the equipment is scheduled to start in late February, when a rocket will be launched and a satellite developed by researchers at Kagawa University will be deployed. Once in orbit, the satellite is designed to unreel a wire net some 300 metres long that will then generate a magnetic field and – theoretically – attract some of the debris that is circulating beyond our atmosphere. And there is a growing need for outer space to undergo a good clean-up, with experts estimating that 100 million bits of man-made junk are zipping around the earth. Of that total, some 22,000 are believed to measure 10 cm or larger and are therefore considered dangerous. The majority of the debris is in a band between 700 kilometers and 1,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet, mostly parts of obsolescent and degrading satellites and rockets. Out of control and impossible to accurately monitor, even the smallest piece of detritus – a single bolt, for example – could have a catastrophic result if it collides with a functioning satellite or the International Space Station, which has a permanent human crew aboard. A recent study in the U.S. suggested that a collision between two satellites could trigger an “uncontrolled chain reaction” that could destroy the communications network on earth. “We started work on this project about five years ago and we are all excited to see the outcome of this first test,” Koji Ozaki, the engineer who heads the development team at Hiroshima-based Nitto Seimo, told the South China Morning Post. The net is a mere 30cm wide when it is unspooled and made of three strong and very flexible lengths of metal fiber, Ozaki said. Taking advantage of the company’s experience in the fishing industry, a net measuring 1 kilometer long has already been fabricated at Nitto Seimo’s factory. “Fishing nets need to be extremely strong because they need to be able to hold a large number of fish, but our tether does not have to be that strong,” he said. “It is more important that it is flexible.” Reports first emerged about the project three years ago, but there were no confirmations about it being tested. The upcoming test is designed to confirm that when a magnetic field is passed through the net, it is able to attract pieces of orbiting debris. Gradually, over the space of about one year, the net and the junk that it has collected will descend closer to Earth and burn up in the frictional heat generated when it reaches the atmosphere. In the future, Jaxa plans to use space craft to attach nets to larger pieces of space junk – rocket engines or satellites that are no longer operational – and let gravity and the atmosphere complete the task of eradicating the threat. Jaxa is planning further trials next year and a functioning system could be deployed as early as 2019. –SCMP

UPDATE:X-FLARE: Giant sunspot AR1944 erupted on Jan 7th at approximately 1832 UT, producing a powerful X1-class solar flare. First-look coronagraph images from the STEREO-Ahead spacecraft appear to show a coronal mass ejection (CME) emerging from the blast site. If so, the CME is almost certainly heading for Earth. Stay tuned for updates as more data arrive from the NASA-ESA Heliophysics Fleet.

One of the biggest sunspots in years is crossing the center of the solar disk, putting Earth in the way of potential eruptions. Rocky Raybell photographed the active region named "AR1944" yesterday from his backyard in Keller, Washington:

The sprawling sunspot contains dozens of dark cores, the largest big enough to swallow Earth three times over. This makes it an easy target for amateur solar telescopes. Raybell used a backyard 'scope capped with a Baader solar filter to capture both the sunspot and trees in the foreground. Photo details may be found here. Although AR1944 has been mostly quiet for days, flares are in the offing. The sunspot has an unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that could erupt at any time. NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of M-class flares and a 30% chance of X-flares on Jan. 7th. Clickhere for A 4-day movie of AR1944 from the Solar Dynamics Observtory

CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a 70% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Jan. 7th when a CME is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field. The CME was hurled in our direction by an M4-class explosion from giant sunspot AR1944 on Jan. 4th. High latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.UPDATE: CME IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 7th at approximately 1500 UT. The glancing impact did not immediately spark a geomagnetic storm. However, storm conditions could develop as Earth travels through the CME's wake. High latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.www.spaceweather.com